"We'll See Them Through"
During World War I, musicians of all stripes turned their attention to war themes, producing a body of music that reflected and cultivated a wartime patriotism among the American public. Musicians also wrote songs intended to boost soldiers’ morale. Wigmore was among their number, writing the music and lyrics for “We’ll See Them Through.” He asked John Philip Sousa, the composer of “The Stars and Stripe Forever, ” to prepare the song’s arrangement for performance by an army band, and Sousa enthusiastically agreed. Wigmore himself financed the distribution of the resulting score to soldiers and military camps across the country.
This was not Wigmore’s first foray into composing; in 1914, he had published his collection of scores, Lyrics of a Lawyer’s Leasure, including the “Counsellor’s Chorus,” which currently hangs in the foyer of Levy Mayer Hall. However, reactions to this particular song varied. The National Committee of Patriotic Societies endorsed “We’ll See Them Through,” praising the lyrics for containing “a slogan as well as a song which can be used,” while the Division Song Leader of the War Department Commission on Training Camp Activities felt that the lyrics were “a little too much in the heroic vein for the boys to relish singing the song about themselves.”
This item is generously on loan from the Northwestern University Archives.